Avengers Assemble Review (Warning, long and geeky)

Never underestimate the fun that can be had with a big green man smashing things. That is the lesson I learned from watching the avengers movie. Well not the only lesson I learned, I also learned that The Avengers is the best superhero movie of all time. Fact.

Ok, hear me out all you "but the Durk Knight was teh burst sooperhero film evaaar!!!" people. Yes the Dark Knight was an incredible movie but it was a dark, gritty and psychologically menacing. It was one of my favourite films of all times, but it wasn't the best superhero movie of all time, this is. A film where the heroes are heroic, the bad guys are bad and the action is super... And the hulks are hulky.

For the ungeeky the avengers have been a superhero team in comic books since way back a few decades ago. It originally consisted of three main heroes; Captain America, Thor and Iron Man. Essentially this boiled down to a culmination of three main classes of hero, the heroic enhanced human in Cap'n, the magic and godly Thor and the new school no true powers but is hella smart Iron Man. From here the avengers grew with pretty much everyone in the Marvel universe at one time being an avenger.

Sounds awesome right? Well why has there never been a film about it? Well it was an incredible risk to make this film and ridiculously ballsy on Disney & Marvel's part (a risk that paid off with the highest opening weekend in American history). It was risky because of the disparity between comics and film. In the comics there is a thing called continuity where all heroes exist in the same universe and can entwine in each others stories but also have their own comic series. This was thought to be too large a feat to accomplish for decades. You would have to create individual franchises and then culminate them into some kind of crazy, epic movie featuring all the franchises togethe....oh wait that's exactly what you did Marvel you crazy mother flippers.

The film takes place after the end of all the previous films (Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America & The Incredible Hulk) where Loki that pesky little demi-god captures the bad square thing that's popped up in most of the previous movies and Samuel L Jackson has to be a bad ass and bring a group of superheroes together to bring it back. The first maybe hour and a half of this film is actually just that. Avengers getting all assembled. This is directed and written spot on by the brilliant, multi-talented, incredible (i may be a little bit bias) Buffy the vampire slayer, Serenity & Cabin In The Woods mastermind Joss Whedon. Joss has an incredible knack for dialogue so as one might expect talking actually takes up most of the story.

I know, you might not want talking, you might want stuff going POW! WHACK! WHALLOP! But no, you want the talking. With this many superheroes all jostling for screen time you'd assume that each character would not be fleshed out and motivations may be skewed but each character is produced perfectly. The blindly loyal, patriotic, old-school Cap'n, the always hilarious Iron Man, the always brilliant Thor (who obviously has a bit of emotional attachment to the villain being his lil bro and all) and most importantly the scarily unsettling Bruce Banner.

Now this is being raved about in pretty much all the reviews of the film, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk. They've finally done it! After the viciously disappointing 2003's hulk and the mediocre Edward Norton reboot it seemed like hulk would never get a truly great portrayal. These films seemed to try and be all serious and deep about a massive green guy that kicks all kind of ass. The Avengers goes down a different route. Whilst there are still the psychological undertones and the true sense that Ruffalo is fighting against "The other guy" (he refuses to refer to the hulk by name) when the Hulk finally shows up to play he gets easily the most f*** yeah moments out of any of the Avengers. He also strangely provides the most humorous moments. Out of all the avengers it's Hulk that will pick up the most new followers.

That's not to say that each character isn't misrepresented. The adversarial nature of a group of such different heroes being thrown together is show throughout the film even boiling down into a couple of epic superhero fights, Thor having a little fight with the Hulk being among the best of them as these seem to be the most over-the-top heroes of the bunch.

I haven't even mentioned how awesome the fight scenes are! I'm just talking about the fight scenes throughout the first and second act as opposed to the most insane superhero climaxy awesome-fest that occurs for the last 40 or so minutes. Whedon has a big budget here and all the fights are absolutely superb, with the majority of the film running on f*** yeah-itude. As its a superhero film these cut it as possibly some of the greatest I've ever seen harking back to the 1980 days of Superman vs. general Zod, but updated to be even more awesome.

Whilst the film is all flashy with its action it never loses its sense of humour, much like the Spiderman films of yore. Obviously the humour is led by the ever funny Downey Jr but all actors get somewhat of a humourous slant. That's why I thought this was in contention to be the best superhero film of all time because it keeps the action packed nature of the source material whilst also retaining the dry wit at the level of the comic writers from the golden age of comics.

Note that I just said I thought it was in contention to be the best superhero film of all time and then the battle royale finale rolled about. Then I was sure that it was the best superhero film of all time. Imagine if Michael Bay had directorial talent. Imagine if he could produce an action scene with the same amount of carnage but also keep the action focused and (as I have mentioned previously) still retain the f*** yeah-itude. Well then you may come close to the final battle in The Avengers. It is essentially the pay off from 5 films and the first 2 hours of this one. So the epic finale that fan boys have been waiting for for roughly 12 hours of film time.

Sure the enemy is simply fodder for our heroes with hundreds of alien invaders with very little true backstory but with all that takes place and the incredible action shots, you really will not care. Even the guy with the bow and arrow gets made to look bad ass. And this is the guy with a bow and arrow when there is also the God of Thunder fighting for the good guys. One little niggle was the seemingly easy time the heroes have. These aliens were bigging themselves up all like "we're so advanced, we're going to destroy these puny humans" but they seem to die from arrows and guns. There were quite a few of them but it seemed that the heroes could have been posed against a bigger threat. Well I guess that's for Avengers 2.

Whilst you may realise where the film may be a little predictable and it having to stuck to the basic superhero formula, this is probably the most fun you can have at the cinema at the moment so I recommend you go see it. Apologies for the long review but this film was just too awesome to contain to a measly few paragraphs. It gets a super 9.8 out of 10.